I. Field
The present invention relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for performing data demodulation in a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) communication system.
II. Background
In a CDMA system, a base station transmits data on “code” channels to wireless terminals. Each code channel is associated with a respective orthogonal code. The base station channelizes data for a code channel by multiplying each data symbol to be transmitted on the code channel with all L chips of an L-chip orthogonal code assigned to the code channel to obtain L channelized data symbols, which are then transmitted. L is the spreading factor (SF) or length of the orthogonal code and is equal to four or greater (i.e., L≧4). A recipient terminal recovers the data sent on the code channel by first multiplying received samples with the L chips of the same orthogonal code to obtain de-patterned samples. The terminal then accumulates groups of L de-patterned samples for the entire orthogonal code to obtain recovered data symbols, which are estimates of the data symbols sent on the code channel by the base station.
The channelization achieves orthogonality among all of the code channels transmitted concurrently by the base station. For Wideband-CDMA (W-CDMA), the channelization is referred to as “spreading”, the code channels are referred to as “physical” channels, and orthogonal variable spreading factor (OVSF) codes are used for the orthogonal codes. For IS-95 and IS-2000, the channelization is referred to as “covering”, the code channels are referred to as “traffic” channels, and Walsh codes and quasi-orthogonal functions (QOF) are used for the orthogonal codes. Thus, different CDMA standards may use different terminology for the channelization process. For clarity, W-CDMA terminology is used for the following description.
A base station may transmit data on multiple physical channels to a single terminal in order to achieve a higher data rate. The base station may also perform other processing on the data symbols prior to transmission to the terminal. For example, the base station may utilize space time transmit diversity (STID) and transmit the data symbols from multiple antennas to obtain spatial diversity, which can combat deleterious path effects. The terminal performs data demodulation to recover the data symbols sent on the multiple physical channels. As part of the data demodulation, the terminal typically performs despreading for each physical channel to obtain despread symbols for that physical channel. The terminal then performs other processing (e.g., channel compensation and STID decoding) on the despread symbols for each physical channel to obtain recovered data symbols for the physical channel. The processing for data demodulation greatly increases as the number of physical channels increases.
There is therefore a need in the art for techniques to more efficiently perform data demodulation in a CDMA system.